"The Deen is Naseehah (Sincerity)"

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Month: February 2012

My mom only had one eye. I hated her… She was
such an embarrassment. She cooked for students and
teachers to support the family.
There was this one day during elementary school
where my mom came to say hello to me. I was so
embarrassed.
How could she do this to me? I ignored her, threw her
a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school one
of my classmates said, ‘EEEE, your mom only has one
eye!’
I wanted to bury myself. I also wanted my mom to
just disappear. I confronted her that day and said, ‘ If
you’re only gonna make me a laughing stock, why
don’t you just die?’
My mom did not respond… I didn’t even stop to think
for a second about what I had said, because I was full
of anger. I was oblivious to her feelings.
I wanted out of that house, and have nothing to do
with her. So I studied real hard, got a chance to go
abroad to study.
Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. I
had kids of my own. I was happy with my life, my kids
and the comforts. Then one day, my Mother came to
visit me. She hadn’t seen me in years and she didn’t
even meet her grandchildren.
When she stood by the door, my children laughed at
her, and I yelled at her for coming over uninvited. I
screamed at her, ‘How dare you come to my house
and scare my children!’ GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!!’
And to this, my mother quietly answered, ‘Oh, I’m so
sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,’ and she
disappeared out of sight.
One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to
my house. So I lied to my wife that I was going on a
business trip. After the reunion, I went to the old
shack just out of curiosity.
My neighbors said that she died. I did not shed a
single tear. They handed me a letter that she had
wanted me to have.
‘My dearest son,
I think of you all the time. I’m sorry that I came to
your house and scared your children.
I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the
reunion. But I may not be able to even get out of bed
to see you. I’m sorry that I was a constant
embarrassment to you when you were growing up.
You see……..when you were very little, you got into
an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn’t
stand watching you having to grow up with one eye.
So I gave you mine.
I was so proud of my son who was seeing a whole
new world for me, in my place, with that eye.
With all my love to you,
Your mother.’

Hazrat Amrah reports that she once asked Hazrat Aaisha (Radhiyallahu Anha) about Rasoolullah (Sallallahu Alayhe Wasallam) behaviour when he was alone with his wives. Hazrat Aaisha (Radhiyallahu Anha) replied, “He was like any other man except for the fact that he was the noblest of them all and the most compassionate. He also laughed and smiled very often.”
Hazrat Jabir (Radhiyallahu Anhu) says, “When revelation would come to Rasoolullah (Sallallahu Alayhe Wasallam) when he was delivering a lecture, he would appear like a person warning his people of an approaching punishment, however, when this was not happening, you see that he has the most smiley face, was the most jovial of people and the handsomest of all men,”

Hazrat Abu Umaamah (Radhiyallahu Anhu) says, “Rasoolullah (Sallallahu Alayhe Wasallam) was one of the most jovial of people and the one with the best personality.”

Sometimes the most important things in life are the little things. InshaAllah let us not forget to share that smile with our loved ones.

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
Arnold Bennett

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin

1. You don’t want to change.

Maybe you think you want to change something. But is it really your wish? Or is it the wish of your parents, boss, partner, friends or society?

If you don’t really want to make the change deep down then it will be very hard to go the distance. Yes, you can begin but if there is no inner drive to do it then you will lose motivation easily and feel like giving up all the time after a while.

What to do about it: Sit down and really think about whose goals you are working towards. If they are not yours then think about what you can do to stop working on them and spend more time on your own consciously chosen goals instead.

If you still have to go on with what may have started as someone else’s goal – perhaps your boss has told you to do something and you can’t just ditch that if you want to keep your job – then find your own reasons for working on that goal. Brainstorm and write them all down. Review that paper and make the goal into more of your goal and know why you are working towards it for you own sake.

2. You don’t feel courageous enough.

Change can be scary. Doing things for the first time or stepping into the unknown can pretty frightening. You may feel like you need some courage to make those changes you want, to take those first steps.

What to do about it: Well, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

You have to be willing to take action, to move out of your comfort zone and to face fear to increase your courage and self confidence in a way that stays with you (not like when you pump it up temporarily by using different exercises or music for example). You have to be willing to take the punch and risk some emotional pain for a while.

There is no way of getting around that.

And I won’t lie to you. Sometimes it will suck. You will go to bed and feel sick to your stomach and just hope the day will end. But many times you will feel great as you just move over that invisible barrier and face your fear. You may not even get the result you wanted but still feel great about yourself because you just dared to face that fear or take some action.

But what about the times you felt sick to your stomach and went to bed feeling not so good at all? Well, the next day you will wake up. And you realize that you are still here. You are intact and the earth keeps spinning and you get up for a new day. Life continues. But now you know deep down that you can handle things at least a little bit better because you could handle what happened yesterday. You have raised your confidence in yourself and become stronger.

And another thing is this: when you do things you don’t just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations. You also experience progressive desensitization. What that means is that situations – like for example public speaking, going on a first date or maybe just showing your latest blogpost to an audience out there – that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life.

It is not something you psyche yourself up to do anymore. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower. And so you don’t really need that much courage after a while.

3. Your environment is holding you back.

If you are for example trying to lose weight then it will be a lot harder if the people around you are eating junk food every day. If you are trying to think more positively then it will be a lot harder if you hang out with negative people all the time and watch the news and negative and fear-inducing TV-shows too much.

What to do about it: Change your environment in a ways that will support you. That’s doesn’t mean that you have to take drastic measures like never talking to some friend or family member again to cultivate a more positive attitude.

It may just means that you cut down on seeing the most negative people/TV-shows etc. that much and replace that with more time with positive people and positive media consumption. By doing that the process of making a change will be so much easier.

If you are trying to lose weight then find people with similar goals that you can spend some time with each week. Even if it’s just via an online forum of some sort.

Carve out some time and a space for yourself with people and motivational and educational information – books, blogs, magazines etc – that will support you as you move towards your goal. Also, by involving more people and/or for example signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa.

One common problem with the social environment is that you perhaps fear what people may think if you make a change. Well, in my experience people are seldom as harsh as you think they will be. They are most often supportive or simply not that interested/neutral to you making changes.

People are most often focused on their own goals and challenges in life. Or what other people may think of them. You are not the center of the universe.

4. You feel like giving up after one or three failures.

When you are really young then you probably don’t build failure up to be this huge thing. You learn to walk, fall down and ding your head and get up again. The same goes for learning to ride your bike.

But through influence from school and society failure becomes this increasingly more frightening thing. Sure, as you get older the stakes become higher and you can lose more if you fail. But I do think people often exaggerate the effects failure will have simply because they feel frightened.

What to do about it: Most of the time the sky will not fall if you fail. People will not mock you. Life just goes on, as I mentioned above while writing about courage. But you have to do things to gain this understanding. You will not get it just by reading these words and all the other things by people who have said the same thing for centuries.

Your mind has to experience failure – or the possibility of it – over and over to make the fear of failure to lot smaller. That has at least been my experience.

You may however find motivation in that failure teaches you things books/blogs cannot. By changing your perspective to a more curious one and seeing failure more as a learning experience than something to fear it becomes easier to handle.

5. You don’t feel enough pain yet.

Why do people change? Oftentimes I think they have simply had enough. The pain of staying as you are becomes too big and you seriously start looking for a positive way forward.

What to do about it: Besides waiting until the problem becomes pretty much unbearable you can try to see your future self vividly in your mind.

Ask yourself: What will this lead to in 5 and 10 years? Where are you going?

Towards massive debt, a heart attack, serious illness and severe restrictions in your future? Do you want go to that place where it is very likely that you will wind up if you don’t make a change?

Then see your future self where you have made the positive change. What positive and awesome things has it brought you in 5 years and in 10 years? See it all in your mind. And remind yourself of the positive and negative consequences by writing them down and reviewing them whenever you feel like quitting and going back to your old ways.

Vividly seeing the probably very real future consequences of not changing can be that nudge you need to get serious about improving something in your life.

6. You don’t know how to practically make the change.

This is a common obstacle. Fortunately, we nowadays have the internet so it’s a lot easier to find practical solutions to the problems many people have faced before you.

What to do about it: Ask yourself: what have other people before you or around you done to improve their situation?

Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve your social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic.

But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go. Find a way that suits you. It may not be the first method or system you try. So be patient. Keep moving forward towards the things you want most in your life.

A man who went to work in the gulf countries for many years, he was very poor when he went there, but he became wealthy, his father was a very righteous man, and used to be a Imam.

So the young man after accumulating this wealth, said to his father:

“My father I want to get married, a lot of years passed by without being married and now I want to get married. ”

And I want you to choose a wife for me, and I want you to go ahead and do the marriage contract, and I want to go into the actual marriage the day that I arrive, I don’t want to see her before that.

This is how much he trusted his father, off course a righteous man knows that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: a woman is asked in marriage for 4 reasons, wealth, beauty, lineage and Religion, you better go for the Religion.

He chose a very religious woman for his son, but yet her physical appearance was not the best. The son arrived at the airport in Egypt, and he was taken to his wife who was wearing a veil. Then he got into the room with her alone, and as soon as she unveiled herself he became shocked, he became shocked!

This is the wife that my father chose for me? Shes not beautiful, shes not beautiful! He became so depressed!, here I come after all these years, and this is what I get? He became so depressed that he just went to sleep.

Towards the last third of the night, the wife who understood the reaction of the husband, tried to wake him up, he refused, she tried again, he refused, and then she sprinkled water over him to wake him up, and then he woke up, and she spoke to him:

” I know how disappointed you are, and i understand I’m not beautiful, but you know what, I wished to get married for one reason.

I wanted to implement the Hadith of the Prophet when he said: May Allah have mercy on a man who wakes up at night to pray and then he wakes up his wife, and if she does not wake up, he will sprinkle some water over her face, to wake her up. And may Allah have mercy on a woman who wakes up at night to pray and then she wakes up her husband, and if he does not wake up, she will sprinkle some water over his face, to wake him up.

And by Allah, I am so grateful to you that you granted me that wish, I wanted to implement that Hadith so much, and I was a little bit hopeless that I would not get married, because I am not beautiful.

Can you please now fulfill the rest of this Hadith with me?

Can you wake up and just lead me in salah, pray tahajjud with me? ”

He wake up and led her in salah.

This man swears by Allah, that as soon as he ended his tahajjud, leading her in salah, I looked at her as if I am looking at the most beautiful woman in the world.

►► That’s the way it goes, don’t be deceived by all these soap opera’s and movies, the love gets to the heart because of Allah, Allah can make you love your spouse, but you and your spouse obey Allah, lead your wives in salah, have your husbands make you lead you in salah.

Don’t compromise, nor test the commands of Allah, if you want to live happily ever after